Design of Active Inductor-Based VCO with Wide Tuning Range for RF Front End

An active inductor based on gyrator-C structure is proposed in this work. Voltage-controlled oscillator with wide frequency range and significant RF output power based on the proposed active inductor is presented in this work. The design of the voltage-controlled oscillator is carried out using UMC 180 nm RFCMOS technology. Postlayout simulations are carried out using Spectre RF in Cadence virtuoso. Voltage-controlled oscillator can be tuned from 500 MHz to 2.8 GHz suitable for multi-band transceiver design. The proposed design attains a frequency tuning range of 139.4%. VCO operates at a supply voltage of 1.8 V with a power consumption of 5.3 mW. Phase noise at a frequency offset of 1 MHz from carrier frequency of 2.4 GHz is - 94 dBc/Hz. VCO occupies an active area of 200 x 150 mu m(2). Figure of merit values that take into consideration RF output power and frequency tuning range are comparable to other VCO designs proposed in the literature. PVT analysis of the designed VCO is presented in this work.